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Can the minimum be eliminated?
At least for Meta, where the information is more useful?

I've never understood this restriction.

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We just thought it would be fun to give folks something at 1000 rep, since there was a bit of a gap between 500 (retag) and 2000 (edit other people's posts).

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    And the free pony at 1k option was just too expensive. – Pollyanna Jan 27 '10 at 4:48
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    This makes sense for SO and SU and Sf, but for meta a lot of users might come here from the other sites and be less active meta browsers and as such not have a high rep on meta. Someone with a high rep on another site should get those privileges on meta (but the same does not hold true for SO/SU/SF cross over) – Sam Jan 27 '10 at 5:37
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    Are you going to do something about the much bigger gap between 3K and 10K? – SLaks Jan 27 '10 at 14:58
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    @SLaks: Why? At 3K you've got all sorts of abilities. You've arrived. The 10K abilities are not nearly as useful. Besides, 500 to 2K is a multiple of four, while 3K to 10K is logarithmically smaller, being a multiple of three. – David Thornley Jan 27 '10 at 15:06
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    @David: I disagree. I quite like the ability to see deleted posts. – SLaks Jan 28 '10 at 3:26
  • @SLaks: Yes, but if you asked me which ability I'd rather have, vote to close or handle deleted posts, I wouldn't spend a millisecond thinking about the answer. – David Thornley Jan 28 '10 at 14:37
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    Jeff, I understand where you're coming from, but hiding certain 'usability features' behind rep limits is counter-productive. Reputation should only be used to limit access to dangerous features. For the non-dangerous features like this one, let everyone have more fun instead of limiting the fun to a small subset of users. And think harder on how to make 1000 folk happy. – ripper234 Apr 11 '10 at 13:03
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    I agree with ripper234. I never noticed the rep requirement because the feature was implemented after I had already hit 1K rep, but it is bugging me on all the new sites. I think the feature should be available to everyone. – JohnFx Sep 9 '10 at 16:06
  • I don't think it's such a secret knowledge that it should require so high rep. – Danubian Sailor May 29 '12 at 9:22
  • Personally I found it motivating. The whole privileges-tied-to-rep thing is surely designed to hook us and leave us wanting more. It lures you to become an active member of the community. There are so many people posting that SO needs an army of answerers and a smaller army of edit suggesters, a smaller still army of reviewers and a yet smaller army of moderators. Rep hooks you and keeps you addicted. This vast pool of expertise is why everyone wants help from SO, and what keeps SO alive. It's got to have a balance of elitism and populism, and keeping the masses wanting more is important. – AndrewC Sep 22 '12 at 23:49
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    Related to what @ripper234 said, I also belive that if the score is low enough (which appens on a low traffic site) knowing if that +2 is +2/-0 or +3/-1 can be usefull - many users still do not feel like commenting on downvote, so by hidding this feature you are hidding the most immediate way to know that the vote existed. – SPArcheon Jan 24 '13 at 11:23

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